


the stars alone; the darkness together

by valfreyja



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Makorra Summer Project, One Shot, planetes au, space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 18:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4798718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valfreyja/pseuds/valfreyja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Fire Ferrets are a small crew collecting junk in space. Korra, the their fearless captain, is caught between what her family wants for her and what she wants. Will she go on a mission to set up a base on Triton? Or will she decide she's done playing to her family's wishes? Whatever she does, it will be with Mako's help. One shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. alone

The Fire Ferrets were serious about their junk. Sure, their hull could only hold half a ton of garbage and not three to five, like the big wigs. Sure, half of the ship always needed repairs and the other half was always being sent back to base. And _sure_ , they were only a crew of four: a captain, a first mate, an engineer, and a collections specialist. But they had heart, _dammit_ , and they pulled in some of the best junk in the 239,000 miles between the Earth and the moon. And everyone on Earth, on the Moon, and probably even on Mars and Neptune, knew it.

Or at least, that’s what Korra liked to tell herself when the junk they were cleaning up was just normal debris and there was nothing between them and Earth but empty space and the promise of almost no money. _The Pabu_ —their sweet little elderly ship named after a red panda, of all things—was currently in geosynchronous orbit somewhere above China. Korra herself floated near the bay window, one of the three windows on the ship, watching the lush, latticework of green and brown turn lazily underneath her.

She loved this sight. She loved space. She loved watching the earth turn beneath her, knowing that everything she had once known was safely nestled in a tiny nest of earth and water. She loved comparing the expanse of her palms to the crumbling, peppered chalk of the moon. She loved the adventure, the thrill of discovering an entire universe filled with new, strange things. She loved the distance between everything, the sweetness that isolation brought with it. Here, in front of this window, surrounded by decaying knobs and graying consoles, she found focus. Where she remembered her own significance on the cosmic scale. Here, she remembered she was just dust in motion, whirling and twisting in a dance of self-directed pleasure. No gods, no masters, no irritating elder uncles to tell her what she should be doing and who she should be marrying. Just her ship and her and her unbroken vision of the earth.

“A yuan for your thoughts?”

She jumped a little, broken from her reverie, though the cord attached to her waist didn’t let her float far. A hand settled on the small of her back and she turned to face Mako, the most trusted of all her crewmates.

“Hm,” she said. She let her hand trail down his arm, delighted that he wasn’t pushing himself away like he usually did when they were up in orbit. “I’m thinking about home.” 

“I thought you didn’t like going home,” he said, resting his hand on the edge of the window. He glanced down towards the earth, then settled his amber eyes on her. His gaze was always so intense. The first time they’d met, she had a hard time holding it for more than a couple of seconds. (Though his reputation as one of the best junkers out there probably had something to do with it too). They were fire. Not quite like the kind that burst out of rockets with chaotic force. Not quite the fire in her mom’s ancient, familial hearth, warm and nourishing. Mako’s fire was somewhere between them: familiar, gentle lightning, the promise of rain lingering behind it.

(He’d told her once, when she’d found him on the darkest part of the moon, staring out into space, that her eyes were a storm that he’d gladly die in.)

“I don’t. Well,” she looked away. “Not anywhere that’s within a thousand miles of my uncle. Actually, last time I visited, I got into a fight with my uncle, my dad, and Tenzin—can you imagine!”

A half-smile settled over his face. “Yes, actually. What was it about?”

“Uncle wants me to quit the junkers and get settled. He hates that I’m here in the first place, after what happened on graduation day two years ago. Tenzin keeps pressuring me to sign up for the mission that’s heading towards Triton. Dad wouldn’t tell any of them to fuck off and let me do my own thing.”

“Don’t you want to go to Triton?”

“I want to—Mako, I really want to; exploring space is my dream—but I don’t want to do it because that’s what they want me to do. I want to do it because _I_ chose to.”

Mako frowned. “But why does that matter when you’re doing what you want to do? Why do something you hate, just because it will spite everyone else?”

Korra huffed. “You don’t get it! No one gets it!”

“I do, Korra,” said Mako, reaching for Korra’s shoulder. “I do get it. But—”

“But what?” said Korra and she dared Mako, just dared him to give her the same bullshit that everyone had been spewing at for the last twenty-five years. All that stuff about not wasting talent, not forgetting about all the sacrifices her parents had made, not forgetting what kinds of strings her uncle had pulled for her, all of those classes and seminars and training sessions pounded into her since she was four because she had _talent_ and _honey, you can’t waste your talents_! She hadn’t had a childhood because she loved the stars and the universe, because her father and Tenzin, then the director of the Children’s Aeronautics Institute, had decided it needed to be _nurtured_.

She hadn’t understood it then. Then, she thought she was being chosen for something special. But she understood it now, and everything, everything was always _her_ destiny, _her_ potential, _her_ dreams when maybe none of it was really hers at all.

Korra felt like a marionette, pulled by strings of blood and kinship, stretched in the name of _talent_ to the point of supernova. She felt like a singularity, losing steam, ready to dissipate and vanish. She felt tired, so tired, of always having to answer to other people.

Mako let his hand gently float up to Korra’s face, lightly grazing the backs of his fingers against the soft skin of her cheeks. (She could anchor herself here. To him. Then maybe it wouldn’t matter.)

“Let it go. Let them go. They don’t matter. You matter. Your happiness matters. Do it for you.” His voice was quiet. He was looking at her with a sweet tilt to his mouth. She wanted to reach up and kiss him—and _oh_ , it’d been ages since she’d been able to do that—but he didn’t get it. He would never get what it was like to carry a Jupiter sized mountain of legacy on your back. He only had to answer to himself.

Korra loved Mako. She loved Mako almost as much as she loved the feel of metal levers and buttons under her fingers, the thrill of catching a piece of old satellite at just the right angle, the way it felt to slurp floating balls of orange soda in zero-g. She loved him as much as she loved the sight of the Earth turning beneath her feet, the stars streaking through a river of milk above her head.

She could do it. Quit the junkers, a job she’d started out in to spite everyone with, even if she loved it now. Marry him. Kiss him hard before she flew off to Triton as first officer of the mission—that was the offer they’d given her back at graduation and she only had a month left to decide—and come back with the legacy of another base successfully established in space. Kiss him hard again. And everyone would be happy. She _might_ be happy. But that’s what she wanted right? That’s what everyone wanted, right?

Why was it so hard? So hard to accept any of this?

She looked back at Mako, knowing she’d be breaking his heart. Because he knew. He always knew. And he was right. But he also didn’t know and he was wrong. She pushed herself away from him.

“You don’t get it. You don’t have anyone to answer to,” she said, knowing she was hurting him. “You don’t know what it’s like! You don’t know!” She glanced out the window, to anywhere but him, back to the cloud-speckled surface of the earth, catching her anger before she made it worse between them. “I have to get back to work.”


	2. together

It had been almost three weeks since she’d walked away from Mako. That mission had gone well, as had all the other petty missions they’d been sent on. Apparently, there just wasn’t that much junk in the orbit they were assigned to. Which was fine with her; it meant she didn’t have to spend more time with people that were disappointed in her. Life was much easier when you pretended the only expectations you’d broken were your own. When you could pretend you weren’t being irrational.

She missed Mako. She always missed him. She missed flying the junker too. And she knew, that when the deadline came up in two days, she wouldn’t give the Triton mission (now officially _Mission Trishul_ ) an answer and they’d walk away from her too. Okay. Maybe that would get Tenzin and Unalaq off her back, finally. Well. She’d stopped talking to them too, so that was that.

There would be other missions.

But not like this. None that would kick off the official start to man’s exploration of deep space. None that would involve breaking ground—er, _breaking space_ —for a hypergate between Neptune and Pluto’s orbits. At least not in her lifetime.

She was okay with that. She was okay with that. She was okay with that.

(She was not okay with that.)

She was in the company mess, sitting at her usual table, picking at sea cucumber dumplings. These were her favorite. They tasted like blasting jelly.

She was staring out at the rest of the people in the hall, chattering happily, enjoying the finest of half freeze-dried delicacies, half moon-grown delicacies. What was it like to be them? To be happy? To not despise a certain group of people so much that you’d ruin yourself to make sure they didn’t get what they wanted? To know if what you wanted what was what you wanted at all?

She blinked.

“Korra, Korra!” a breathless Bolin slid into the seat in front of her. His face was flushed. He looked like he’d run all the way from their office room to the mess (a ten minute walk, one thousand six-hundred thirty-eight steps).

Korra blinked at him again. “What?”

Asami slid into the seat next to him. Her face was flushed as well. Even her usually perfectly curled hair was in hanging out in wisps, a halo of frizz.

“You need to find Mako,” said Bolin.

“He can’t be too far,” said Korra, blinking again. “Did you check the cat café on the far side of the gardens?”

“We’ve looked everywhere!” Bolin reached across the table and shook Korra. “I think he’s gone off to the dark side again, except the space suit he took was being prepped for repairs—” he took a sharp breath. “There wasn’t that much oxygen in its tank and I’m pretty sure the suit will rip itself open and then Mako’s gonna die! Korra _YOU CAN’T LET MAKO DIE_ —”

Asami put a hand on Bolin’s shoulder. He looked at her, nodded and sat back.

Korra narrowed her eyes. “Mako would never be that irresponsible. He’s probably fine.”

“Korra, please?” asked Asami. Her eyes were watery and her mascara expertly smudged. She folded her hands together and put them against her chest.

“It’s been a couple of hours and you’re the only one with clearance to take a rover out. Please find him. The suit might not implode—” and she shot a hard glare back at Bolin—“but he’s not safe out there. Please make sure he is.”

Korra didn’t believe a word they were saying. Mako did have a habit of taking moonwalks, but he was _not_ someone to just grab a random suit and leave. But she also knew that these two would never leave her alone if she didn’t go. Plus, she was their captain. Regardless of what she was feeling, she needed to make sure that all her crew were safe.

“Fine. I’ll go,” she said, standing up. “Where was his last radio ping?”

“Fitzgerald Crater,” said Asami and Bolin, together.

“…Right.”

Forty-five minutes later, Korra was almost at the crater. This side of the moon was a lot more treacherous. There were no flat seas here; just lots and lots of craters in almost total darkness. You couldn’t really pick your way across this landscape without following carefully placed radio trails and infrared. She’d been following his suit pings and she was, in fact getting worried about Mako. If the readings she was getting on her dashboard were right, his suit was running low on oxygen. Not so much that he couldn’t have made it back to the base in one piece, but enough to worry her.

As she pulled closer to the crater, she noticed a small white mound on the ground. Her heart sped up. The worst scenarios started pushing themselves through her head. What if he’d really run out of oxygen? What if his helmet had shattered? What if she was too late? Oh god, he was going to die without hearing how sorry she was for saying what she had that day. _Oh no oh no oh no oh no_ —

She slammed the brakes on the rover, jumped out of it before it came to a full stop, and stumbled towards the white reflecting in the rover’s headlights.

“Mako!” she called, heart freezing when he didn’t respond, before she realized she hadn’t turned on her suit’s wireless.

She was starting to shake and she kept missing the switch on her shoulder but the white mound moved and she saw a flash of amber as the helmet’s sunshade rolled down.

“Hey,” he mouthed. She let out a gasp and finally hit the wireless switch.

She plopped down next to him, her knees next to his head. “You all are the worst,” she said.

He sat up, smiling. “Learned from the best. What brings you out here?”

“Bolin and Asami somehow convinced me you were dying and—” She caught his gaze on her and her cheeks started to burn. “You know what? I was worried about you.”

“I’ve been worried about you too, you know.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. They’d done this once before. Confessing their feelings to each other in the darkness of the moon, with nothing but stars hanging like plump, jeweled dust hanging over them. It was silly, but she felt like this was _their_ place. Where they could be themselves, and no one else. She only pretended that no one existed back at the base, back home. But here, where the death of space could hit you and you wouldn’t even know, they were truly alone.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m sorry for what I said to you the other day. I’m sorry for acting like a comet. I’m sorry for taking it out on you. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Korra,” said Mako, sitting up and pulling her into a hug. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

She slumped against him. It was awkward like this, where she couldn’t feel his skin against hers, smell the sharp spice and musk that always lingered on his skin, where she couldn’t feel the blood thrumming through his veins. But it would have to do for now.

They stayed like that until Korra calmed down.

“I meant what I said that day,” said Mako, after a while. “Do it for you. You don’t even have to tell them. I’ll be with you no matter what.”

Korra nodded. “I know.”

“You know why I feel so at home here?”

“Tell me.”

“Because it’s just me. And space. And my thoughts. And I know that what I think here is what I want. It’s simple.” He pulled her closer, as close as their suits would let them be. His faceplate pressed against hers. “Korra, what do you want?”

Korra looked above her. To the stars. To the darkness. To a future she’d told her father about when she was only four years old. To Mako, to the way he was glancing up at the stars too. To his gloved hands, curling together with hers. She heard him take a breath, and she knew.

It wouldn’t be easy. It’d never be easy. She’d always doubt herself. Her uncle would be as irritated as ever, but Tenzin would be so pleased, so proud. Her dad would approve. And she’d rage and fume and cry and every once in a while Mako would have to pull her close and tell her to remember everything she’d been through to get there. To remember this, _him_.

But she looked up at the stars, at the trails of dust reaching so far away from home, at the lovely darkness on the far side of the moon. And she knew.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was my submission for the makorra summer project and a lot of fun to write. i hope you enjoyed!


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